Page 19 of Skin In the Game (The BlackWater)

They blindfolded her and chucked her back in the van. She knew she was going home then so she didn’t resist it but still she made a point of kicking out when the opportunity arose. She was nobody’s bitch and she sure as hell wasn’t going to play nice now.

They removed the sack and cut her wrists before opening the doors and half dumping her on the street. She glared at them and watched as they drove off, mentally remembering the number plate not that she thought she could do anything with it. Then she turned, headed into her apartment foyer and climbed the ridiculous amount of stairs to her place. She could have taken the lift, but in the state she was in she didn’t want to bump into anyone and have to explain why she was covered in blood and looked like she’d been in a serious fight.

She stood outside her door, wondering how trashed the place was and feeling more than a little violated. Sure she’d gone through peoples apartments before but this felt different. It was personal. They’d touched her things, read through her things. She shook her head and opened the door and her jaw dropped. The place was exactly as she’d left it, right down to the dirty wine glass in the sink.

Damn, those BlackWater guys were good, she thought and it made her feel even more uncomfortable because it meant they could come back at any time, any moment, rifle through her belongings and she’d be none the wise.

She slammed the door shut and shuddered. It was so quiet inside. Usually she liked that. The peace. The space to think but right now it felt eerie as if someone was watching her.

She walked to the fridge narrowing her eyes as she remembered what they’d found behind it, what someone had planted behind it. If she was going to hide something she would have hid it in a far better place than the back of a fucking fridge.

She grabbed a beer, popping the cap, and half downed it thinking about what had happened, not just the interrogation but McCullough too.

And then she cast her eyes around the space. Were they still watching her she wondered? If they’d searched the place they would have had more than enough time to plant a few cameras, a few listening devices too. This was BlackWater after all.

She put the beer down assessing the place, walking around, looking for anything amiss. If I were planting a bug where would I put it, she thought, and then she proceeded to do a full sweep of the place, starting from the front door, through the utility and cloakroom, the toilet, the kitchen, office, all of it.

She found one in her bedroom which for some reason amused her, one tucked carefully under the couch, another right in the corner above the kitchen cabinets and the one that offended her the most, in her bathroom, pointed right at the shower like she was going to put on a god damn performance for them.

She put them on the side, thinking, deciding what to do.

Back at the Site, they watched too, seeing as she’d walked around, seeing as she one by one uncovered each bug.

“She’s good.” Someone muttered and both Cole Black and Brandon scowled.

“I want eyes on her, I want to know where she goes, who she’s with, what she eats, when she breathes all of it.” He snapped and Brandon nodded in agreement.

Maddie went to the drawer and pulled out a carrier bag, putting all the bugs into it before twisting the top and then placing it in a sandwich box. She then opened the fridge and stashed it right at the back behind some ketchup and an old jar of jalapenos. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t just smashed them but somehow she felt like they might be good leverage.

She was itching to go look for it, to check the Run Box and see if it was safe but she didn’t dare. What if there was another camera, she thought, what if she’d missed one. She was damned if she was going to give them anything by being stupid, by being reckless. She needed to stay calm. To be calm. To remain in control.

She sat down then, grabbing a pen and paper and made a list of things, she needed a new phone for starters, she wanted some sort of mace too just in case and she needed to speak to Burke because maybe he had information or at least an insight into what the hell was going down between Homewell and BlackWater.

She sipped her beer and stared down at the city below. If the shower was her favourite thing about the apartment then this view had to be a very close second. With the floor to ceiling glass windows, the view across the water and the buildings around her was breathtaking from the height she was at. She watched as the car lights down below whizzed past and the party boats sailed down the Thames, thinking, ruminating, mulling it all over.

After what felt like hours she looked away, looked back at her space. They had been there, they had been through everything. She clenched her fists still seeing no signs apart from the bugs she’d found.

But it felt dirty, trashed.

She walked to the utility room and grabbed a bucket and mop and poured almost a whole bottle of bleach in with some hot water. She wasn’t a clean freak, she wasn’t obsessive about cleanliness but she like everything organised, logical. Just knowing that they had been there, that someone had been there, uninvited and not knowing what they had touched made her want to scream and she started scrubbing, bit by bit, working her way through till the place was spotless.

She chucked the cleaning stuff back into the cupboard and then climbed the stairs up to her bedroom. Her bedroom sat on a half level, so that it too looked out across the city and over the living space below with just a glass balustrade to keep someone from falling. She looked at her bed, at the sheets and they felt dirty too. She pulled them off and chucked them on the floor. She pulled her bedside cabinet open too, pulling out the underwear she had stashed there.

She walked into the walk in wardrobe and started pulling out clothes from the drawers. Everything felt tarnished. Everything felt ruined. She tossed it all in a pile and then she went and got black sacks. She separated the underwear from everything else she bagged up before throwing it off from her room down to land beside one of the leather couches below.

The bag with underwear she carried down to the kitchen and she balled it up before putting it by the front door. The rest of the clothes she put on the opposite side. And then she finally sat down, finally just stopped.

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